Priorities Right for Obama on Solar PV

Implications

Solar energy will see a $117.6 million investment. Photovoltaic technology development will account for $51.5 million and another $40.5 million will be used for deployment. Projects in this area will focus on nontechnical barriers to solar energy deployment, including grid connection, market barriers to solar energy adoption in cities, and the shortage of trained solar energy installers. Finally, CSP technology research and development will get $25.6 million. This work will focus on improving the reliability of concentrating solar power technologies and enhancing the capabilities of DOE National Laboratories to provide test and evaluation support to the solar industry.

Analysis

The photovoltaic industry is struggling from the onslaught of the world wide recession and the steep drop in oil and gas prices. Businesses are losing money, stocks are down, with a greatly reduced installation of global solar PV MW by 20 percent in the year 2009, and a concurrent drop in prices by over 28 percent compared to 2008.From the earlier industry which depended mostly on leftover chips from the IC industry, Solar PV has come of age today.Over the last couple of years manufacturers of semiconductors have woken up to the burgeoning growth in the demand for silicon chips for the solar power industry.Drop in prices seen in 2009 have in fact attracted a global resurgence in investments in solar power MW installations.Thus 2010 augurs really well for the industry. However priorities for the industry especially in R&D and Training and Certification needs to change. The stress as in the past, had been on reducing use of silicon, pioneered by the  maturity in development of thin film technology.Future priorities will be on improving efficiencies, smarter designs for adoption of solar PV for power generation specially grid integration, testing of CSP equipment and above all training of installers.This the Obama Stimulus Plan for Geothermal and Solar is right on its priorities.

Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.

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